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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903540">Crochet</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyeDragonDraws/pseuds/SkyeDragonDraws'>SkyeDragonDraws</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>rain and needles [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hollow Knight (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Drabble Collection, Gen, like seriously pay attention to those</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:41:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,046</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25903540</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyeDragonDraws/pseuds/SkyeDragonDraws</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Side stories and drabbles from the Rain and Needlesverse.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel &amp; The Pale King, The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel &amp; The Radiance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>rain and needles [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854088</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>82</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Crochet</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>One thing real quick: This should be considered concept art for the 'verse canon! I do not have a solid plan for this verse, outside of a few things, so anything in this drabble collection can be retconned at any time by the main fics. </p><p>Warnings for mind horror, unreality, a LOT of religious imagery and language. this one is a solid Wow That's Kinda Fucked Up. take care of yourself, please!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world is full of gods and the world is gods and vessels are for gods. </p><p>(Gods created the world to be full and bright and gods created it to be emptied and holy.)</p><p>Shell and carapace crunch underneath it. </p><p>(Siblings, siblings, all dead and broken and weeping in this dark, terrifying pit.) </p><p>It does not care. It is meeting its gods. </p><p>It will be enough. It will leave this place.  </p><p>*</p><p>The home of its gods is white. Blindingly so.</p><p>It welcomes this, as much as something that believes itself to be empty can. </p><p>*</p><p>It was hollow, at times.</p><p>The belief of gods is a powerful thing. </p><p>Its gods believed it to be empty and it believed it was empty and so it was, when it didn’t think about how its belief required a mind or a will or-</p><p>It was hollow.</p><p>No.</p><p>Vessels are for gods, and its gods made it to be hollow so it is. It is hollow. </p><p>There can be no room for doubt in its worship.</p><p>*</p><p>The roots retreat. One of its gods abandons it.</p><p>It hopes-</p><p>(do not hope.)</p><p>It believes She will return. </p><p>She does not.</p><p>Its belief was not strong enough for Her. </p><p>The blinding palace’s glow brightens around it as it swears a silent oath to be strong enough for Him.</p><p>(The seeds of doubt have been planted. They will sprout slowly, but for now are a hairline crack in the foundations of its faith.</p><p>They are very tiny seeds. Minuscule, irrelevant. </p><p>But oh, they will sprout.)</p><p>*</p><p>It does not realize, until it is taller than Him and soul-magic springs to its fingertips without need for focusing, how His mind aided it in its hollowness.</p><p>Gods are powerful.</p><p>(Perhaps too much so.)</p><p>It must hold firm in its belief, then, even after the gift of His mind leaves it. Utter devotion is all He asks of it, in His great mercy and kindness, and it will be faithful. </p><p>(The blinding palace’s glow dulls. It shuts its eyes.)</p><p>*</p><p>As it catches its final glimpse of Him, as the void fills the temple and before She can take its mind in Hers.</p><p>As His mind leaves it for the final time, it is able to see for the first time.</p><p>(It is the first time it ever sees. It is the last time it ever sees.</p><p>She makes sure of that.)</p><p>And through its seeing, it understands, although a mindless thing should not.  </p><p>He believed Himself a good king, and so He was.</p><p>He believed Himself to be irredeemable, and so He was.</p><p>He believed it to be hollow, and so it was.</p><p>He believed a sacrifice to be necessary, and so it was. </p><p>*</p><p>It would be incorrect to say that She wasted no time stripping it of its faith. </p><p>She took it as a project, a unique creation that She’d never seen before. A god, and such a young one, that should still be in its father’s nest, so utterly devoted to erasing its own existence? What an oddity, delivered to her by her greatest enemy.</p><p>(She was, of course, furious. It was not idle curiosity alone that caused her to rip it apart from the inside out.</p><p>It was simply an anomaly in a world of boredom.)</p><p>So She teases at its belief, learns what She can and cannot make it do at each stage of unraveling its holiness. </p><p>(It has no belief, not anymore. </p><p>She believes it should not have the will for such a thing, and so it does not.</p><p>She believes it to be unable to contain Her, and so it is.)</p><p>*</p><p>She makes and unmakes it, molding its mind in Her wings.  </p><p>Without its faith, it can do nothing but suffer as she believes it should.</p><p>(Maybe it is not faithless.</p><p>Maybe obedience to the will of other gods has been burned into it from the start.</p><p>Maybe it simply believes She is right, when it suffers for its wretched lack of emptiness.)</p><p>(Maybe this is not so wrong, really.</p><p>Vessels are for gods, after all.)</p><p>*</p><p>The seeds sprout, watered by the blows of its sibling’s nail against a carapace that has not been its for a long time.</p><p>The shell is white and shining and holy, but it it has not approached this divinity since it was rent from Him.</p><p>(Perhaps it never was holy. Perhaps its faith was always faulted.)</p><p>The belief molding it in a pure image is weak, compared to Hers. </p><p>(Perhaps there is a twisted sort of devotion, in how She makes it suffer.</p><p>Whatever there is, it slides into a semblance of a forbidden clarity as it is torn from Her dream time and time again.)</p><p>It grabs its sibling's hand.</p><p>It lifts them up.</p><p>(They must ascend.)</p><p>It is pulled back into Her dream.</p><p>As void clouds the air, it believes.</p><p>It believes its small sibling is going to kill Her.</p><p>And so they do.</p><p>*</p><p>The dawn breaks, ripped into shreds by the sibling.</p><p>(For some unknown reason, it is spared.)</p><p>A new god ascends, bringing an end  to the frozen sunset. </p><p>Vessels are for gods, and so it is taken by this one, as it has been time and time again.</p><p>From its birthplace to the blinding palace to the Dream to this strangely soft nest in a place it does not recognize.</p><p>A new god has claimed it, despite it’s broken, useless state. </p><p>(And yet, clarity does not leave it.)</p><p>*</p><p>It waits.</p><p>It waits and waits and waits and waits.</p><p>It can do nothing else.</p><p>It cannot be hollow any longer - its belief was shattered, in the trading of one blindness for another - so it is obedient.</p><p>Obedience in its worship was enough for Him but not enough for Her and it doesn’t think (do not think) obeying will be enough for its siblings, especially in its ragged, moth-eaten, useless state, but it must try.</p><p>Since it is not hollow, the least it can do is use the will that should be forbidden to it to be still.</p><p>(The clacking of the needles begins again, lulling its attention away from thoughts of worship and light and death.</p><p>It must be patient. It will learn what will it is to be bent to soon enough.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>vessels: by gods, for gods!</p><p>(will i elaborate on the exact headcanons on display here if poked in the comments? perhaps.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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